


love, can't protect you now

by callunavulgari



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Possible Character Death, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-20 20:14:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10669968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: “When they come,” Rodney tells him quietly, “I won’t kill you.”John’s lips move against his pulse. “You’ll die.”Rodney shrugs. “Maybe.”





	love, can't protect you now

**Author's Note:**

> You don’t know real angst until one half of your otp has to kill the other, said the random tumblr post. 
> 
> Welp, I said, there's my night squared away.

There’s moss covering nearly every surface of the cave that they’re in - a green carpet running from floor to ceiling. It’s damp and springy, soft under Rodney’s palms. Another time, he’d be grateful for it. Caves are dank and dingy, and lord save you if you have to spend any amount of time on a cave floor, because your bruises will have bruises.

Now, he isn’t thinking about the moss. He’s looking at it, mapping every square inch of it with his eyes, but he isn’t thinking about it. He’s thinking about John, whose face was drawn tight into a grim mask the last time Rodney had dared to look in his direction.

“Rodney,” John’s saying, his voice a creak of a sound. “Rodney.”

That’s all John’s been saying for the last hour. He’d given up trying to argue Rodney into submission after the first two hours, and now all that’s left is Rodney’s name in his mouth. He’s said Rodney’s name twenty-six times in the last half hour, the syllables drawn out tighter and tighter every time.

Rodney doesn’t need John to tell him that they’re running out of time. He can hear it in the way that John’s started saying his name. Quiet. Pleading.

“No,” Rodney hisses again, for the twenty-seventh time. He clutches at the moss beneath him, bringing up great clumps of it in white-knuckled hands. A bug scurries away as he watches, it’s legs a blur in the dim light.

John takes a deep breath, his legs shifting into sight. “But-”

Rodney gives him a single scathing look, his lips drawn up into a sneer. He’s angry, so furious that he can feel the heat of it in his bones, his belly. This anger will define him if he lets it, and he really doesn’t want his last thoughts to be anger. Not at John.

John’s face is still grim, sallow, sweat beading along his hairline and dripping down his nose. Rodney’s known John for years now, but he’s never seen him look as hopeless as he does right now. It’s painted across every line of his face, the creases and laugh lines deeper than they’ve ever been. Looking at the moss was easier, but Rodney makes himself look.

Rodney swallows, feeling the bob of his throat. It chokes him, and he struggles for a moment, trying to remember how to breathe. Between them sits a pistol - pristine and gleaming, freshly polished. John had checked it six times, but there’s still only one bullet.

“I won’t do it,” Rodney says quietly, a tremor in his voice.

John looks at him.

“Rodney,” he says.

“No.”

“You know it’s the only way that they’ll let you out,” John tells him in the same tone of voice he’d used the first time he’d said it.

Rodney scoffs. “We don’t know that. They might just leave me here to rot.”

And then he’d be alone, free to live out the rest of his life in a cave next to the corpse of his best friend. There’s moisture in the cave, nutrients in the moss, but Rodney could only survive on that for so long. If they left him here he’d live days before he succumbed to hunger or thirst, and he’d die knowing that he’d killed John for nothing.

“Rodney,” John says. Twenty-eight. “Please.”

The thing about John is that he’ll always be the first person to jump on a grenade. He’s always been too ready to die for others, to play the sacrificial pawn. But John also keeps his promises, which is probably the only reason that he hasn’t seized the gun and just offed himself.

So he’s left trying to convince Rodney to kill him, on the slim chance that their captors will make good on their word and let Rodney go free.

Rodney stays quiet, teeth digging into his lower lip, arms locked tight around his ribs.

“Rodney!” John barks, his lips drawing back to show teeth, hands exploding into motion as he grabs for the gun. For a moment, Rodney thinks that maybe he was wrong, that John Sheppard doesn’t keep his promises after all. But then John is prying Rodney’s arms away from himself and thrusting the gun into his hands, his own wrapping tightly around both Rodney’s and the barrel as he brings the gun up to press against his brow.

John swallows, his hands trembling around Rodney’s. He tugs gently, until the mouth of the gun is digging into the front of his skull. His throat works, and this time it takes him two tries to get the word out. “Please.”

“No, no, no,” Rodney whispers urgently, _angrily_ , trying to jerk his hands free. John holds him fast, his hands steady even when the rest of him isn’t. Panic curls up tight under Rodney’s breastbone and he jerks back again, harder. “See, you don’t get to do that. You don’t get to-”

“Please, Rodney. _Please_ ,” John begs, desperation making the corners of his mouth wobble. Rodney tugs again, but still John’s grip doesn’t waver. “If you don’t do this, they’ll kill us both.”

“So _let them_ ,” Rodney snarls. John’s eyes go wide, but Rodney isn’t done.

There’s a hazy, whirling maelstrom of emotion inside of him, and it’s drowning him, closing up his throat and hammering at his gut, and Rodney - he doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t. Being part of a team has changed him. He knows things like loyalty now, things that would have never occurred to him before he came to Atlantis. Things like self-sacrifice and the feel of a gun in your hands. He knows what it’s like to lose people and he knows what it feels like to be a coward.

And Rodney is a coward. He is. Maybe he isn’t one at heart anymore, but in this moment, he is most definitely a coward. John can argue with him about how Atlantis needs him until he’s blue in the face, but the fact of the matter is that Atlantis needs them both. And if he were a better man, he’d take that gun and shoot himself right now. Let John Sheppard survive so he can throw his life away another day, without Rodney having to watch him do it.

“Let them,” he says again, quieter. John’s hands have gone lax around his, so Rodney works his hands free, tossing the gun aside. When that’s done, he takes John’s hands in his own, threading their fingers together and gripping tight. There’s something swelling in his chest, and it isn’t quite a sob but might as well be. It’s loss and potential and a thousand things they’ll never have if this night goes the way he thinks it will.

He presses in closer, leaning in to touch his forehead to John’s, right where the gun has left its mark. “I won’t be the one to kill you, John. I won’t. You can’t make me.”

John’s eyes are so close to his that they’re blurred, out of focus, but Rodney can imagine the wrinkle between his eyes as he frowns, how his eyes are probably doing that thing where they shine hurt and angry in equal measures.

“Please,” John says again, but the fight has gone out of him. He slumps, burying his face against Rodney’s shoulder. He mumbles the rest into the space beneath Rodney’s chin, his breath hot and damp. “Don’t. You shouldn’t have to die here.”

“Neither should you,” Rodney says with a short, lopsided shrug. “Yet here we are.”

John snorts out a breath of laughter, and wet eyelashes drag against Rodney’s cheek. “You’re a shit, McKay.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Rodney murmurs with a sigh.

The moss is still green, but John is warm against him. Warm and human, shaking faintly. When the assholes had first thrown them in here, they’d talked themselves through dozens of plans. Then, they’d been forced to discard every single one. It had taken two and a half hours before John had admitted defeat and pressed the gun into Rodney’s hands.

“Thought you knew everything,” John says. He sounds tired.

There’s a lengthy pause where they both pretend they aren’t just listening to the thump of each other’s hearts.

“I like you, Rodney,” John says at last.

Tears come to Rodney’s eyes, hot and fast, and for a moment, he wants desperately to hit John. Wants to bruise his fists against those pretty cheekbones, grab him by the shoulders and shake him-

He bites down on his lip, smothering the curses before they can come out of his mouth.

Fuck you, he wants to say. How dare you - how dare you wait until now.

There will be no future for them. Nothing except death, the present, their corpses mouldering in some stupid cave on a backwater planet. Teyla and Ronon might find them, but Rodney isn’t stupid. They flirt the line with death on a daily basis, but this time, their time’s run out.

“Thought I said something I didn’t know,” he murmurs quietly, burying his nose in John’s hair.

John sucks in a breath. Lets it out, slow and steady.

His lips are touching Rodney’s neck.

“When they come,” Rodney tells him quietly. “I won’t kill you.”

John’s lips move against his pulse. “You’ll die.”

Rodney shrugs. “Maybe.”

“I’ll die anyway,” John tries, one last hint of desperation threading into his voice. “Please, just-”

Rodney doesn’t say anything, letting John trail off on his own.

He watches the moss on the walls.

.

When they come, the gun is heavy in his hands. John is looking at him pleadingly, face cracked wide open. The real John Sheppard stares back at him, tears clinging to his lashes, mouth twisted into a shape he’s never seen it in.

“Kill him,” they say.

Rodney doesn’t.


End file.
